The world is ending! Thirty-three schools in Michigan are closing "in part because the Mayan…
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"There's the legend and there's the reality," said Yolanda Cornelio, a tourism official from the city of Mérida where 60% of the people are of Mayan ethnicity. "Some people take the legend and abuse it, using it to make money. There's a lot of con artists."

What is perhaps most unfortunate is that in all the talk of a doomsday that is highly unlikely to materialize, an historic occasion is being ignored: The start of a new cycle in the ancient Mayan Long Count calendar.

"It's an era," Santos Esteban of Yaxuna told CNN. "We are lucky to see how it ends."